The new rail provider for most trains out of Norwich, Greater Anglia, has posted an apology to customers on its website, admitting that its first month in charge had not been up to scratch.

Greater Anglia took over the regional franchise for intercity, commuter and rural services from National Express East Anglia early in February.

The apology on the website states that it would be the first to admit that its performance had not been to the level expected or demanded by customers.

It continues: 'We are committed to improving and we are pleased to say that we have seen improvement in the last few weeks - in the week ending March 10 90.6pc arrived within five minutes.

'We recognise that we need to continue this and would like to apologise for the problems on Thursday morning caused by a late running freight train at Harlow Mill and over-running engineering work between Witham and Chelmsford. 'Ensuring our services run on time is important to you and we understand the impact it has when we let you down.'

The rail provider said that it was working with Network Rail to improve the performance of the service and had outlined some of the key issues that had caused disruption as well as highlighting the actions it's taking to avoid these occurring again.

Before it was replaced, National Express East Anglia registered the lowest satisfaction in terms of value for money and was rated joint bottom in terms of train punctuality.